“Even if I deny it, I could not persuade you–
since it is abundantly clear how things turned out.
If I would have offered myself to a man,
Vending out my secret sex to him,
Then I would already clearly appear to be an adultress.
But know, since I am crazy from a god’s attack,
I grieve, but I grieve over an unwilling crime.
There’s no probability to it! What did I see in that bull
bull to be bitten by the most wretched disease?”
This is a repost. But I never get sick of these poems. And many of my students and colleagues might need some inspiration this time of year.
Pindar, Isthmian 7.40-49
“Seeking whatever pleasure each day gives
I will arrive at a peaceful old age and my allotted end.
For we all die the same, though
Our luck is unequal. If someone gazes
Too far, we are too small to reach the bronze threshold of the gods.
This is why winged Pegasos dropped his master
When he wanted to ascend the terraces of the sky.
When Bellerophon reached for Zeus’ assembly.
The bitterest end lies in wait
however sweet the injustice.”
“I, painting from myself and to myself, 90
Know what I do, am unmoved by men’s blame
Or their praise either. Somebody remarks
Morello’s outline there is wrongly traced,
His hue mistaken; what of that? or else,
Rightly traced and well ordered; what of that? 95
Speak as they please, what does the mountain care? Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what’s a heaven for? All is silver-gray
Placid and perfect with my art: the worse!
In one of my favorite modern pieces, the poet Jack Gilbert explores the theme of flying and falling in “Failing And Flying” (from 2005’s wonderful Refusing Heaven) where he begins and ends with a meditation on Icarus. The sentiments seem apt (the text comes from poetryfoundation.org):
Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It’s the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.
The passage above from Pindar assumes some basic knowledge on the part of its audience, for instance: the connection between Bellerophon and Pegasos and how the former was in a position to fall from the latter. It is clear from the use of the figure as a negative example that the story had both broad currency and a typical understanding. A Scholiast in writing on Pindar’s 13th Olympian ode elaborates on the details of the fall (Schol. In Pindar Ol. 13.130c).
“For it is reported that when he planned to fly up on Pegasos and put himself in danger on high, he fell when Pegasos was bitten by a fly according to Zeus’ plan and he was crippled. So Homer says that he wandered crippled on the Alêion plain (Il. 6.201).
The story of Bellerophon’s exile, told in Homer, is clarified or re-envisioned with the story of his downfall as articulated as a moral in Pindar. In Athenian Tragedy, Bellerophon became a popular figure (we have fragmentary plays by Sophocles and Euripides). Bellerophon’s eventual vengeance upon Sthenboia (an alternative for Anteia, Proitios’ wife) is the man story in Euripides’ play of that name that starts with a rumination on the trouble women cause for men:
Euripides, Stheneboia Fr. 661-662
“There is no man who is lucky in all things.
Either a man born noble has no livelihood
Or the baseborn ploughs fertile fields.
And many who boast of their wealth or birth
Are shamed by a foolish woman in their homes.”
Just as Pindar uses Bellerophon as a vehicle to deliver a moralizing message, so too Euripides uses the hero to voice general concerns. In a second play on Bellerophon, Euripides returns to the moral content of Pindar’s complaint but, rather than simply portraying an instance of hubris, he offers a hero challenging the nature of divinity.
Here are two fragments from the lost Euripidean Bellerophon in which the eponymous hero denies that the gods exist. He does not seem to say that there are no gods at all, but his complaints are like those of Xenophanes who complains about the misbehavior of Homer’s gods.
Instead, Bellerophon’s complaints are based on the fact that since the world seems unjust and the gods are supposed to ensure justice, therefore they must not exist (either totally or in the form man makes them).
Euripides, fr.286.1-7 (Bellerophon)
“Is there anyone who thinks there are gods in heaven?
There are not. There are not, for any man who wishes
Not to be a fool and trust some ancient story.
Look at it yourselves, don’t make up your mind
Because of my words. I think that tyranny
Kills so many men and steals their possessions
And that men break their oaths by sacking cities.
But the men who do such things are more fortunate
Than those who live each die piously, at peace.
I know that small cities honor the gods,
Cities that obey stronger more impious men
Because they are overpowered by the strength of their arms.”
For a few lines in the second choral ode from Euripides’ Helen, the fine Bryn Mawr Commentary (J. W. Ambrose and A. D. Wooley 1992) almost give up: “Virtually untranslatable.
Here is the full passage where Helen sings (348-359)
“I call on you, I swear on you,
Eurotas, green with watery reed,
If the report of my husband dying
Is true—and how could I misunderstand these things?—
Then, I will stretch around my neck
A murderous noose.
Or, I will bring home
The sword-death mission
Of blood-flowing slaughter.
A contest of steel itself through my flesh,
A sacrifice to the three-yoked goddesses
And to Priam’s son sitting in the Idaian cave
Near the cow-folds.”
William Allan in his Cambridge commentary (2008) is a bit more circumspect:
Earlier, (in disputed lines, deleted for sense and propriety more than anything else) Helen compares forms of suicide (298-302). This passage seems to correspond well to the contemplation and expansion of slaughter above.
“It is best to die? How could I not die well?
Hanging high in the air is improper,
It is thought unmannerly even by slaves.
Stabbing has something noble and fine about it.
It is a short time to gain freedom from life”
On a decidedly autumnal day in New England, a dialogue about the seasons
Bion, fr. 2 (preserved in Stobaeus 1.8.39)
Kleodamos
Myrsôn, what do you find sweet in the spring,
The winter, fall, or summer? Which do you pray for the most?
Is it summer when everything we have worked for is done,
Or is fall sweeter, when hunger is light for men,
Or is it winter, bad for work, when because of the season
Many warm themselves delighting in laziness and relaxation—
Or, surely, is it noble spring which pleases you more?
Tell me what’s on your mind, since leisure has allowed us to chat.
Myrsos
It is not right for mortals to judge divine deeds—
For all these things are sacred and sweet. But for you, Kleodamos,
I will confess what seems sweeter to me than the rest.
I do not wish for the summer, since the sun cooks me then.
I do not wish for the Fall, since that season brings disease.
The Winter brings ruinous snow—and I have chilling fear.
I long for Spring three times as much for the whole year,
When neither the cold nor the heat weigh upon me.
Everything is pregnant in the spring, everything grows sweet in springtime
When humans have nights and days as equal, nearly the same.”
Summer: θέρος, τὸ: from a root meanting “warm, heat”
Winter: χεῖμα, τὸ (ancient word for Winter)
Fall: φθινόπωρον, τό: from φθιν (φθίω “decay, waste, dwindle”)+ ὀπώρα (“end of summer, harvest”)
Ecclesiastes, 3 Latin Vulgate
omnia tempus habent et suis spatiis transeunt universa sub caelo
tempus nascendi et tempus moriendi tempus plantandi
et tempus evellendi quod plantatum est
Chaintrain s.v. pharmakon, after surveying various approaches to its etymology (mostly reflexes of pherô and PIE *bher-) concludes “la question de l’origine de pharmakon est insoluble en l’ état present de nos connaissances.”
But it seems that the medicinal/therapeutic power of conversation was a popular trope in several contexts.
Some Proverbs from Arsenius, Paroemiographer
“Only words [reason] is medicine for grief”
Λόγος μέν ἐστι φάρμακον λύπης μόνος.
“Conversation [ or ‘reason’] is the doctor for suffering in the soul”
Λόγος ἰατρὸς τοῦ κατὰ ψυχὴν πάθους.
The palliative and or curative effect of stories and speech appears with some frequency in Euripides (and then appears in other authors as well)
Euripides, fr. 1065
“Many words of the ancients still ring true:
Their fine stories are medicine for mortal fear.”
“Mortals have no other medicine for pain
Like the advice of a good man, a friend
Who has experience with this sickness.
A man who troubles then calms his thoughts with drinking,
Finds immediate pleasure, but laments twice as much later on.”
“There are different medicines for different diseases.
A kind story [muthos] from friends for a man in grief;
Advice for someone playing the fool to excess”
I have leapt through the Muses
And soared high but
Even though I have tried most words
I have found nothing stronger than Necessity
Not any medicine at all.
“Love should summon the Muses; the Muses should carry love.
The Muses—I hope—give song to me always when I need it,
Sweet song, no medicine is more pleasing!”
[Today the Almeida Theater in the UK is presenting a live reading of the Odyssey. Duly inspired, we are re-posting some of our favorite Odyssey themed posts]
“What shall I tell first and what shall I tell last?
The Ouranian gods gave me so many pains.
But now I will announce my name so that you all will know it
since I have avoided a pitiless day and have come
to join you as a guest in these halls.
I am Odysseus, the son of Laertes who is known among all men for tricks:
my fame reaches even up to heaven.”
“Nothing is unexpected, nothing is foresworn and
Nothing amazes now that father Zeus the Olympian
veiled the light to make it night at midday
even as sun was shining: so dread fear has overtaken men.
From this time on everything that men believe
will be doubted: may none of us who see this be surprised
when we see forest beasts taking turns in the salted field
with dolphins, when the echoing waves of the sea become
Dearer to them than the sand, and the dolphins love the wooded glen…”
From Plutarch’s Quomodo Adolescens Poetas Audire Debeat (16a-c)
“First of all, it is best to introduce the youth to poems when they have already learned as a watchword the saying that “poets tell many lies,” some willingly, and others unwillingly. They lie willingly with an eye toward pleasure and attractiveness—things which most people pursue: they feel that the truth is rather more severe than fiction. This is because that truth occurs in reality and does not change even if it ends in displeasure. Fiction, since it is formed by speech, easily changes its direction and turns to pleasure from something that might cause pain.
Hence, neither meter, nor style, nor magnitude of speech, nor fit of metaphor, nor unity and composition have as much seduction and charm as the well-woven plot of a fantastic tale. So, just as in painting color is more moving than a line drawing because it is more life-like and illusory, so too will fiction mixed in with persuasive poetry be more striking and cause more pleasure than a poem well-built in its meter and diction but devoid of myth and fantasy.
This is why Socrates, when he was inspired by some dreams to poetry—since he had been a champion for truth his entire life—was not a believable or natural creator of fiction and instead worked the tales of Aesop in to epic verse because he believed that it was not possible for poetry to exist apart from some fiction.”
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